Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday tried to justify his decision to release the phone number of a New York Times journalist who wrote an investigation into his alleged ties to the drug trade, AFP reports.

López Obrador read out the journalist’s phone number during his regular press conference the other day, along with the questions she sent him for his investigation.

“There can be no law above the fundamental principle that is freedom,” the leftist president said on Friday when asked by a reporter whether he had breached privacy rules.

“What will happen when this journalist slanders me? “Unproved links me and my family” with organized crime, the head of state added.

The data protection authority has launched an investigation to determine whether the release of the number is a “violation” of Mexican law in this area.

On Thursday, the New York Times condemned the “disturbing and unacceptable tactics.”

López Obrador “said outright today that the laws of his country do not apply to him,” condemned Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), on X (formerly Twitter).

The President of Mexico must “apologize to the journalist,” said Balbina Flores, spokeswoman for Reporters Without Borders in Mexico, in a commentary for Milenio TV.

Since 2000, about 150 journalists have been killed in Mexico.

The New York Times investigation was published Thursday in English and Spanish. According to her, investigations by US officials have revealed “possible links between powerful cartel operators and officials and advisers” close to López Obrador.

The article claims that a person close to the head of state met with Ismael Zambada, one of the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, before his election victory in 2018.

“The United States has never opened a formal investigation into López Obrador, and officials tasked with doing so have shelved it,” the New York Times noted.